SharePoint: Discover New Page Templates

Key insights

• Video overview: This YouTube video introduces the new SharePoint Page Template Gallery, now generally available for commercial customers (launched July 2025).
  The presenters show how templates help teams create pages and news posts faster with less design effort.
• Centralized access: The gallery appears from several entry points—site home (+ New Page/News), the SharePoint App Bar (+ Create), and the News web part—so users find templates where they work.
  Central access makes template selection simpler and more consistent across sites.
• Template types and preview: Microsoft provides over 50 out-of-the-box (OOB) templates and sites can store their own templates under “Saved on this site.”
  The gallery lets you preview templates before applying them to pick the best layout for your content.
• Modern design features: Templates use features like flexible sections and image shape options to create cleaner, more modern page layouts.
  These options let authors build visually appealing pages that move away from the classic SharePoint look.
• Non-destructive customization: After selecting a template, you can add, remove, or move web parts without changing the original template.
  This keeps templates reusable and lets teams tailor pages to specific needs.
• Use cases and benefits: Templates cover common scenarios like status updates, event pages, and team introductions to speed production and improve consistency.
  The video includes a live demo and next steps, and encourages feedback from users to refine the experience.

Video overview and context

The video, published by Microsoft, introduces the new SharePoint Template Gallery and outlines how it aims to simplify page and news post creation. In clear terms, presenters Tina Chen and Vesa Juvonen walk viewers through the gallery’s purpose, its public rollout window between early and late July 2025, and the ways teams can access templates. The short agenda shown in the video highlights a live demo and a brief discussion of next steps, starting at 00:00 with a demo at 02:05 and closing notes at 08:38. Consequently, the clip focuses on practical demonstration rather than deep technical detail, which makes it useful for communicators and content creators assessing the feature.

Moreover, the video positions the gallery as part of a broader effort to modernize SharePoint authoring and intranet experiences. The presenters emphasize that templates are meant to reduce design work so that teams can concentrate on messaging and outcomes. At the same time, they invite feedback from commercial customers to refine the experience over time. Therefore, the recording reads as both an introduction and an open call for real-world input.

What the demo showed

During the live demonstration, the presenters previewed the gallery interface and then applied a template to create a page, showing how users can customize content without altering the original template. They highlighted the ability to preview templates before applying them and demonstrated how web parts can be added, removed, or moved after a template is chosen. This hands-on walk-through makes the feature’s immediate value visible, especially for teams that need quick, consistent page designs. In addition, the demo underlined how templates preserve layout integrity while still allowing editorial flexibility.

Furthermore, the demo illustrated multiple entry points for template access, such as the site home page and the SharePoint App Bar, which increases discoverability across different user workflows. The presenters also showcased examples of modern layouts that use flexible sections and updated image shaping, revealing how design options now look less like classic SharePoint pages. As a result, authors can achieve a more contemporary, branded appearance with less manual formatting. However, the demo did not dive into administrative setup or tenant-level controls, leaving some governance questions for later discussion.

Key features and benefits

The gallery delivers over 50 out-of-the-box (OOB) templates from Microsoft, plus the ability to save and reuse site-specific custom templates, which supports both consistency and local adaptation. This combination lets organizations rely on curated starters while enabling teams to preserve templates tailored to their own processes and branding. Importantly, templates cover common scenarios such as status updates, event announcements, and team introductions, which helps reduce repetitive design decisions. Thus, teams can produce polished pages faster and focus resources on content quality.

Additionally, the centralized access model simplifies the authoring experience because users find templates where they typically create pages or news posts. Preview functionality helps editors choose the best option before committing, and the ability to modify applied templates without changing the source provides safe experimentation. Together, these features balance control and creativity, encouraging adoption while protecting template consistency. Nevertheless, administrators should consider how to govern template publishing and lifecycle to avoid a cluttered or inconsistent gallery over time.

Tradeoffs and operational challenges

Despite clear benefits, the gallery introduces tradeoffs between standardization and uniqueness: templates speed up production, but heavy reliance on them may reduce page variety and differentiation. Organizations must therefore balance centralized curation with freedom for teams to craft distinctive messages, which may require governance policies and template review processes. Moreover, scaling custom templates across many sites raises operational tasks such as versioning, ownership, and retirement of outdated templates. Consequently, teams will need a strategy to manage templates sustainably.

Another challenge concerns adoption and training; while the interface aims to be intuitive, some users will still need guidance on when to pick a template versus building from scratch. Accessibility and localization also pose ongoing work: ensuring templates meet accessibility standards and work across languages is essential, yet it requires consistent testing and maintenance. Finally, performance and compatibility considerations appear when templates incorporate advanced capabilities like full-page apps, which can increase complexity for authors and administrators alike. Therefore, implementation planning should include governance, training, and validation steps.

Adoption outlook and next steps

Looking ahead, the presenters invited feedback from commercial customers to influence future iterations, signaling an iterative rollout informed by real-world usage. Organizations should pilot the gallery with a mix of central communications and distributed teams to learn how templates fit into existing processes and to refine governance. Meanwhile, content owners can start cataloging common page types and decide which scenarios benefit most from templates. As a result, teams can create a prioritized adoption plan that balances efficiency and brand control.

In summary, the video offers a practical introduction to the SharePoint Template Gallery and highlights a clear path for organizations to accelerate page creation while managing design quality. Although governance, accessibility, and training require attention, the gallery promises to reduce routine design work and raise baseline page quality. Therefore, early trials combined with structured feedback will help organizations realize the feature’s potential while addressing the tradeoffs described.

Keywords

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